A homesteading experiment and collection of incredible ideas

Post navigation

Spring Fever

It is spring time up in here, y’all! And we have the seed orders to prove it! Ben’s go-to for our garden seeds is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and they rarely disappoint. This year, we even got a thank you note from John B (pictured above).

Side note: Has anyone else listened to (Let’s be honest here: It was a full-on binge situation.) S-town Podcast from NPR’s This American Life and Serial teams? The main character (and he’s quite a character) is named John B. This photo gives me an awesome visual although they are most certainly not the same person.

Anyway—back to the seeds! You can see just a small bit of our veggie varieties above and the flowers we will plant below. The waiting is about to kill us both. But soon we’ll be able to put these babies in the dirt and watch while magic happens!

One thing we have been able to put in the ground…a couple of lilacs I scored at Costco for $10!! I love that place. Have I sung its praises to you yet? If not, ask me. You’ll have to tell me to stop.

There were three color options, but I went for the deepest purple to echo the color of the front door. They are in the ground and hopefully will give us some blooms this time next year.

Another sure sign it’s spring…I’m craving color like nobody’s business! I’ve been dreaming of colors to paint the new front door—the exterior door that opens directly into the mud room (that small space that connects the garage to the laundry).

I considered repeating the purple of the mail box and current front door (that opens directly onto the living room and is pictured above). But the new door is under a covered porch and tucked between the two buildings, so its pretty shadowy. I think the purple is too dark. I need some pow!

Next I considered the turquoise of the back door. But I really want to add a third bright to our gray-darker gray-black exterior scheme. Something bright, cheery, hopeful—the color of spring!

I have been inspired by a few things I own: a kiwi-color tea towel, an ombre scarf and a pair of mittens (knitted by my sister) that I’ve been wearing all winter.

And my decorator instincts were confirmed! I’m definitely going green. And once the decision was made, it just kept popping up everywhere I looked…

Even though spring is in the air and I’m dying to get my hands in the dirt, it has been raining almost every day for two+ weeks. For real. My creative brain has switched out of the winter blahs and is going stir crazy wanting to make something pretty! So I’ve been hanging some art around the living room/kitchen.

Since we moved in I have refused to hang anything on the wall knowing that it will all move around once we unload everything from storage and I have my entire collection to play with. But over the past few years we’ve bought and been given several special things that definitely deserve a place to hang.

These little beauties were Christmas gifts from my very talented goddaughters, Alyson and Catherine.

This is the piece that hung over our sink before I tiled the wall.

This is a print from a local letterpress artist that I gave Ben as a gift. It is “hung” in an old window that I found at the ReStore for $2. I used clear photo corners (that are used for scrapbooking) to float the print.

This is our new phone that I’m loving. The red one was great, but the old-school slide-mount connection kept pulling out of the wall jack and ending calls. Plus, we couldn’t make it compatible with our answering machine (I know…we have now progressed to approximately 1990). So I found this old-style beauty on Amazon. I must say that dialing in the round takes a lot of concentration.

Lastly, we paired The Big C with a large frame that, in our old house, framed the TV as if it were a piece of art. This time, I was struck by a sudden idea when trying to figure out what to do with Ben’s grandmother’s apron without tucking it in a closet for safe keeping or it getting buried on the coat rack. I held it up inside the frame and ah-ha! It fits! It took me a bit to find a hanger that would would be petite enough to not make the hem touch the bottom edge of the frame (I finally landed on a plastic toddler-size one), but now it is a framed piece of family history! I love it!

Are y’all suffering from spring fever, as well? What are you doing or planning around your place? Planting? Painting? Decorating?

If nothing else, you should get your ears on all seven chapters of the S-Town podcast. I promise you won’t regret it!!